Conference Agenda

The infrastructure in many municipalities in Germany is not in good condition (Raffer and Scheller 2023, Schneider 2023). Official statistics have shown consistently negative net fixed asset investments by municipalities for around two decades (Destatis 2023). In view of the associated loss of value, it is hardly surprising that the German municipal investment backlog now amounts to around 186 billion euros (Raffer and Scheller 2024). There are many reasons for this phenomenon. In addition to a lack of funding, the literature lists so-called non-monetary barriers to investment (Scheller et al. 2021). One prominent example: municipal surveys and previous econometric analyses indicate that the number of employees in the administration or personnel expenditure can have an influence on construction expenditure (Scheller et al. 2021, Bremer et al. 2023). This refers to the theoretical frame of administrative capacity (Lodge and Wegrich, 2014). In our paper, we analyse this relationship for the first time using full-time equivalents in the building administration at municipal level and use data from North Rhine-Westphalia from 2009 to 2021. To limit endogeneity problems in an empirical setup which requires a dynamic panel model, we implement a system GMM estimation (Roodman 2009; Arellano and Bond 1999, Bond 2002).

Initial results indicate that, contrary to previous assumptions, the number of employees in the building administration is no strong and robust explanatory variable for municipal construction investment. However, fiscal variables such as social transfers or the level of cash loans are robust and significant over a wide set of different specifications. This not only shows that it is not so much the lack of personnel, but above all the lack of money that is the cause of insufficient investment. The result also implies that it is precisely those municipalities that are already struggling with high levels of short-term debt and a high proportion of transfer-dependent residents that are failing to maintain their infrastructure. The results are particularly important with regard to future investments for the transformation with respect to climate change and adaptation.

Regardless of the type of crisis, local administrations are generally one of the first institutions on the front line to be involved in dealing with a crisis. This response can take a wide variety of forms, yet most importantly it requires certain administrative skills to remain capable of acting. With a focus on the local administration, this study theorises that the concept of administrative crisis capacity offers a framework to consolidate key topics of current crisis and disaster research as well as the different phases of crises and disasters simultaneously. Hence, this research examines the capacity of local administrations during a crisis in a qualitative case study. Empirically, four administrative capacities – analytical, regulatory, delivery, and coordination capacity – are studied on the case of the 2021 flood disaster in western Germany. By conducting expert interviews and employing qualitative content analysis on the basis of a deductive-inductive category system for analysis, this study makes use of the critical insights of experts in the field, both from administrative as well as operational perspectives. Ultimately the results highlight the potential of the concept of administrative crisis capacity as analysis framework for more systematic comparisons in crisis management research. The empirical findings indicate that assessing how capable of acting German administrations are in crisis situations, specifically during the ‘flood of the century’ in Western Germany in July 2021, cannot be accomplished through an examination of a singular dimension of crisis management. Instead, such evaluation necessitates a comprehensive and multidimensional analytical framework, i.e. based on the concept of administrative crisis capacity. Building on these conceptual findings, the study further proposes that the development of such an analytical framework can enhance the study of local public crisis management, being applicable across many types of crises and disasters.

Can the levying of local property taxes undermine people’s general trust in government? In our paper we are interested in the degree to which changes in property tax affect citizens’ trust in government. Specifically, we ask the question whether the introduction of property taxes serves to reinforce or undermine trust in government. The study contributes to the growing literature on policy feedbacks by singling out taxation as an understudied policy field. Also, we are studying policy formation at the local level and thereby ensuring variation. We employ a novel dataset that combines individual-level data from four waves of the Norwegian Citizens Survey (2010, 2013, 2015, and 2016) with data on municipal-level tax policies. The analysis yields mixed results. We do observe that introducing property tax on average increases political trust among citizens. However, these findings are not consistent with the results concerning our service perception variable. In sum, our analysis provides limited support for the hypothesis that taxation affects citizens’ trust in government.